I’m copying this from my Recent Reading page because I just can’t let it hide in a corner. I love this book that much.

Trigger City, by Sean Chercover (Ray Dudgeon PI mystery #2): First I have to own up that I know Sean and consider him a friend so, yes I’m biased, but… Goddamn is this a good book! I liked the first one, Big City, Bad Blood, a lot and I like this one even more. Sean’s already-sharp and noir-lyric writing has gotten even better and his plot is tighter than ever. PI-hero Ray Dudgeon is still messed up and hardheaded, but you have to pull for him, love him, and admire his sense of honor. He’s a twenty-first century Sam Spade. This time around Ray gets sucked into dark doings that revolve around the murder of the daughter of a retired Army Intelligence officer, the suicide of her killer, private military contractors, Chinese dissidents, and political corruption. I had the feeling there was some tiny flaw somewhere, but I never could put my finger on it, so hypnotic is Chercover’s storytelling. I’s a corker of a story, violent and gritty and mesmerizing. Chercover is still the best new PI novelist of the decade.

The downside: it’s so good it makes me cry and think I’ll never equal it.